JUST before we start, I’d like to ask your advice: would you write ‘adviser’ or advisor’? Both are correct.

I’m going to go ahead with ‘adviser’ because it’s traditional. The American form ‘advisor’ is creeping in and I’d prefer to bat it away for as long as possible.

Advisor still looks to me like something you’d clip to the front of your motorcycle helmet.

My first encounter with an official adviser was the careers adviser at school who turned up one day and interviewed members of the lower sixth in the dining room.

She asked what I was studying.

I was going through something of an indecisive patch educationally and had opted for something I loved – art – and something I was good at, having come from a severely Nonconformist background – religion.

I was also studying English which she dismissed instantly with a wave of the hand. “We’re all English, dear. That’s like studying breathing.”

Art, then?

“There’s no future in being an artist unless you’re really, really good,” the adviser advised. “You’ll freeze to death in a Parisian garret, ha ha.”

At the time, I believed careers advisers knew everything I didn’t. I believed in authority. I believed, in short, pretty much everything adults told me.

So that was the end of my artistic ambitions. What next?

“I know my Bible,” I said helpfully.

“You could become a vicar.”

“No I couldn’t,’’ I replied. “I’m a Baptist.”

And besides, I already knew that ministers didn’t even get wages. They got stipends which sounded more like a disease than a pay packet and was not for me.

“I can write,’’ I said. “I love writing stories.”

There’s no future in being a writer unless you’re really, really good,” said the careers adviser.

Best not be a writer, I thought. I wonder where writers freeze to death? Presumably in the caring arms of a careers adviser.

My options were shrinking. “I love Nature,” I said desperately. “I once collected 57 different types of wild flower at Flamborough Head.”

“I’ve got the very thing for you,” said the adviser gleefully. “A job with the Forestry Commission.”

I digested this one in silence for a moment. I could just about see where she was going. If I love wild flowers, I must love trees. And if I love trees, I must want to chop them down.

“My mother’s a teacher,” I said.

“That’s it,” said the adviser. “Why don’t you train as a teacher?”

I made my excuses and left.

I did, as it happens, train to be a teacher because somebody said they had long holidays, got paid quite well and ended up with a nice pension.

The trouble was, I realised in my second year that I didn’t much like children.

My friend Pete’s daughter is facing her A-levels. She’s worked out exactly which ones she wants to take to get her on to a university nanotechnology course.

She’s good at art too and has worked out which universities will support her best running those two passions in tandem.

When she ran this past her careers adviser it was as if she’d slapped the fellow in the face.

After a bit of spluttering, he said: “You’ll need to get good A-levels for that.”

This, to be fair, was not a revelation. Like me, Pete’s daughter made her excuses and left.

My colleague Hilarie said: “At school I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do, but it seemed a good idea to follow in my father’s footsteps and go into teaching.

“The careers adviser said he thought that was a good idea too.

“But then I said that I really wanted to be a hairdresser.

“This was sneered at. What was a grammar school girl thinking of, wanting to do a working class job? As it turns out, hairdressing is a licence to print money. Mine drives a BMW.”

Hilarie summed the experience up: “They were no help at all.”

In every profession there are people who are good at what they do and people who are ill-suited to their role.

This is no blanket criticism of careers advisers. I recognise it is extremely difficult to assess a youngster’s potential and on that basis to offer a shrewd selection of apposite career choices in the 10 minutes or less that most youngsters are likely to get.

I’m also sure that many – I’d hope most – careers advisers have their clients’ best interests at heart and that my three sample experiences are not typical.

Keen teenager: “I’m good at listening. I’m good at pointing out the blindingly obvious. I don’t have a great many life skills, but I’ve read a lot about what other people do for a living. Some of them are quite interesting. And I like talking to young people.”

The careers adviser rocks on the back legs of his chair and rubs the grease off his spectacle lenses.

“Hmm,” he says sagely. “You could become a careers adviser.”